The Hunt for FireFox

Old habits die hard, at least they do when it comes to trying to keep this blog semi-updated. According to my last update, I was headed to Finland. Well Finland came and went in a matter of a blink of an eye. OK, so the blink was pretty long, 12 days to be exact - but still don't quite know where the time went. Today, I find myself in the Frankfurt Airport - waiting to catch a night bus to the city of Hamburg. But I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit. Let's discuss Finland.




Not your everyday road sign

 My time in Finland was split between the Capital, Helsinki, and a city to the north called Rovaniemi. Rovaniemi sits almost directly on the Arctic Circle - my interest in going was to try and see the Northern Lights. Of my 6 days in Rovaniemi, my journey north proved unsuccessful in this regard, but as always, was very rewarding and incredible in other ways. Interesting fact for the day is the word for "Northern Lights" in Finnish is translated as "foxfire" or more appropriately, FireFox. The traditional story is that a fox runs along the top of snow-capped hills in the night and its mystical tail brushes snow into the night sky creating the dazzling aurora borealis. Pretty interesting - one thing is for sure, now the symbol for the internet browser "Firefox" makes a lot more sense. I suppose it could be a coincidence that it looks rather flame like - but I like to imagine it's part of the Northern Lights.

May be kind of difficult to see, but there is a man
in yellow walking on the frozen ice
to the right of the ship. 

Even though mid-March and October are supposed to be the best opportunities to see the aurora, there's still a large part of luck involved, especially if you don't go far enough North. Technically the lights can be seen as far south as Helsinki on certain occasions of spectacular solar activity and the like, but this type of occurrence is not very common at all. Rovaniemi stands a decent chance, but it wasn't meant to be. 2 nights I was there had moderate activity, but both of those nights ended up being cloudy. Rats. My life goal of seeing the Northern Lights remains, but the excuse to go on a trip to try again makes me content. I did what I could. : )



Old Medieval part of Tallinn, Estonia

 Aside from not seeing the Northern Lights, I got to do quite a few "authentic" Finnish activities. Thanks to a little website called "couchsurfing.org" I was able to stay with real Finnish people (yes, REAL) in their homes. For my 12 days in Finland, I was hosted by a total of 4 different people - think of the website as a hospitality group that welcomes travellers into their homes (at request) so that you can exchange in cultural experiences and really get to know a place more intimately (there's quite a bit more to it sometimes, but that is it in a nutshell). Thanks to my incredible hosts I got to experience ice-fishing, cross country skiing, Finnish Sauna, Finnish cuisine, good old fashioned sausage roasting over a fire in the middle of the snow, and much more. Really, I could rave about couchsurfing all day, but I think it would be more appropriate to rave about the people ON couchsurfing that welcomed me into their homes and treated me like I had lived there all along.
There are quite a few things I found to be quite intriguing about Finland - in order to save on time (and because I'm lazy), I'll list some of them in bullet form.

-In Finnish, there's no future tense, nor is there any word for "please"
-The longest word in Finnish is about 28 letters. And no, it's not supercalafradgulas
-I was told by a couple different Finnish people that speaking English can be a little tiring at times. The reason is because they said they have to move their mouth quite a bit more in the pronunciation and in a very different way from Finnish. I think of all the people I've talked to who speak different languages, this is the first time I've heard such a statement. I'm not saying it's not true (how the hell would I know anyway? I don't speak Finnish) - I just thought it was quite interesting that such a difference occurred. It is pretty interesting hearing Finnish though; it is a very monotonic (not sure if that's a word) language and when you watch people speak sometimes it doesn't even look like their mouths move. From what I could tell, I kind of got an idea what they were talking about when they said speaking English required a bit more "physical" work.
- The game "Angry Birds" is Finnish. Personally, I've never played the game so I really don't understand all the hype - but for those that do, it's probably important that you know this. If Nokia didn't put Finland on the map for you, Angry Birds should! Haha, there's much more to Finland though than having the shallow understandings of two of their well known products.
-Coming from Oregon and not having to deal with very much snow or cold, the lifestyle here is amusingly different in very logical ways. People have what I like to think of as "ice-sleds" they use to get around. A sled with handle bars that you push along like a skateboard. Hilarious to see young and elderly alike using them.
-In certain areas, it is not uncommon for people go to work on skis (at least in Rovaniemi they did). And new routes or shortcuts are made once the rivers, lakes, or harbors freeze up.
-It's extremely bizarre being on cruise boat heading to Estonia and looking further away on the landscape to see people walking or using snowmobiles on the frozen ice. Haha, also, the crunching sound of ice sheets running up against the boat is a little unnerving as well. Can't help but think, "this does not seem like a good idea." Obviously, they know what they're doing though.
-No "he/she" in Finnish.
-And finally, Conan O'Brien is extremely popular here. Haha, I'm not a regular Conan viewer, so I had no idea. Read up about some of the things he's done on his show about Finland, it's fairly amusing - especially when it comes to trying influencing their last presidential election.

And now I'm running out of things to type about. My current agenda has me travelling around Germany, Czech Republic, and Austria for the next 4 weeks. While I enjoyed Finland, I must say that it'll be nice to be able to find a beer for less than 5 Euros and not spending 10 mins. getting dressed or undressed from 10 layers of clothes every time I go in doors will also be pleasant. : ) After reading this over, it's a rather "bland" or boring update in my opinion - nothing too personalized, but hey, maybe you learned a thing or two about Finland.

Sunrise on the cruise ship heading towards Estonia.
The only part that is land is the part that is clearly so.
The rest is frozen sheets of ice.